Your Water Bill Has Doubled: Is It a Leak, and Can You Claim It Back?

A water bill two or three times the usual amount is one of the more common reasons people ring us, and it is one of the few plumbing problems where the money can be recovered afterwards. Most Auckland homeowners do not know that last part, so they pay the bill, fix the leak, and never ask.

Here is how to work out what happened and what to do about the charge.

Is a high bill always a leak?

No, and it is worth ruling out the boring explanations first. Visitors staying, a new appliance, filling a pool or a spa, a summer of watering the garden, or a longer billing period will all move the number.

What points at a leak instead is a bill that is high with no change in how you have been living, or one that has crept up over several billing periods rather than spiking once. Water escaping from a pipe runs twenty four hours a day, so it produces a steady climb rather than a one-off jump.

Look at the shape of the last few bills, not just the latest one. That pattern tells you more than the amount does.

Climbing a bit each period, or jumped once and stayed up. That is a leak. A leak does not take a week off, so once it starts, the charge either creeps or steps up and then holds at the new level.
Up one period, back down the next. That is usage, not a leak. Somebody was using a lot of water, or, very commonly, an outside hose tap was left running or not shut off properly. It shows up as one bad bill and then the number returns to normal by itself, which is something a leak never does.

So before you book anybody, dig out the previous two or three bills and see which of those two shapes you are looking at.

How do I check in one minute?

Turn off every tap inside and out, including the washing machine and dishwasher, and make sure nobody flushes anything. Then go to the meter at your boundary and watch the dial.

If it is turning, water is going somewhere with nothing running. That is the whole test. It costs nothing, it takes a minute, and it is the single most useful piece of information you can give a plumber before we arrive. We have written it out step by step, with what each part of the dial is telling you, in the one minute water leak check.

If you want to be more precise, note the reading, leave the house untouched for an hour, and read it again. A slow leak that is hard to see on the dial shows up clearly over an hour.

Watercare rang me about my water use. What is that?

They do monitor for unusual consumption, and they will sometimes contact you before you have noticed anything yourself.

We attended a property in Hobsonville where the owner had been getting higher than usual bills for several months and had then been contacted by Watercare about a burst on the water main. We inspected the main and found a cracked 25mm elbow fitting, replaced it, and the meter went quiet. Without that call it would have kept running.

If Watercare contact you about your usage, treat it as real information rather than a sales call. It means their data says water is leaving your connection and not going through your taps.

Where do these leaks usually turn out to be?

In rough order of how often we find them:

A toilet cistern quietly running. The most common and the most missed, because it makes almost no noise and leaves no mark. A cistern with a failed valve can put a startling amount of water down the drain over a month.
The underground main between the meter and the house. No visible sign at all if the ground drains well. This is the one that produces the very large bills.
An old joint or fitting under the house. At a property in Onehunga we found a burst on the existing water main under the floor, at a tee and elbow connection on old pipework. Nothing was visible from inside the house.
The hot water cylinder’s relief valve. If it is discharging continuously, the water goes out the overflow pipe and disappears, often onto the roof or into a gully where nobody looks.
Irrigation and garden lines. Anything downstream of a garden tap is easy to forget about entirely.

What is a leak allowance, and how do I get one?

Watercare has a leak allowance, sometimes called a remission, for exactly this situation: a hidden leak that you could not reasonably have known about, which has now been found and repaired. If it is approved, they credit part of the excess water charge back to your account.

The sequence matters. Fix the leak first, then apply. They are crediting water that was lost before a repair, so the repair has to have happened and you need to be able to show it.

You will generally need the dates, the address, an account number, and evidence of the repair from a plumber. Search “leak allowance” on watercare.co.nz for the current form and criteria, because the thresholds and how often you can claim do change. It is worth asking even if you are not sure you qualify. On a long running underground leak the water charge is often larger than the plumbing bill.

What do I need from the plumber for the claim?

An invoice that actually says what was wrong, where it was, and when it was repaired. “Plumbing work” on a line item helps nobody.

We write our invoices so they can be used for this, and we add a note about the leak allowance to the invoice when a job qualifies, with the link to apply. If you have already had a repair done by somebody else and the paperwork is thin, ask them for a short report confirming the fault, the location and the repair date. That is normally enough.

Keep your own evidence too. A photo of the meter turning before the repair, and a photo of it stopped afterwards, makes the case obvious.

What if the leak turns out to be on Watercare’s side?

Then you should not be paying for that water at all, and the repair is theirs.

The test is the valve at your water meter. Shut it off, and watch the meter. If the meter keeps turning with your valve closed, the water is escaping before it reaches your property, and that is Watercare’s to fix on 09 442 2222 at no cost to you. If the meter stops, the leak is on your side.

If you have a high bill and no idea why, email us your last few water bills at [email protected]. Three or four billing periods is ideal, because the pattern across them is what tells us whether this is a leak or usage. We will work through the numbers and tell you what we think is happening, and what the sensible next step is, before you spend anything on investigation.

If water is running right now and you need someone today, call us instead.

Common questions

How much water does a running toilet actually waste?

Enough to be the single largest item on a bill without anybody hearing a thing. A cistern with a failed valve trickles into the pan continuously, and because the water goes straight down the waste there is no puddle, no stain and no sound to alert you. Put a few drops of food colouring in the cistern, wait twenty minutes without flushing, and if colour appears in the bowl the cistern is leaking.

My meter is turning very slowly. Does that still matter?

It does. A leak too small to see on the dial in thirty seconds is still running every hour of every day, and it is often the early stage of something that will fail properly later. We had a job in Birkdale where we repaired a leak at the meter box connection and the meter still crept round afterwards, which told us there was more to find rather than that the job was done.

Where it gets found is the difference. Finding a leak comes down to listening for it, so a small leak inside the house is usually tracked down without much trouble: we can isolate sections, and escaping water under pressure makes a noise you can hear against pipework. A small leak underground is a much harder problem, because the soil swallows the sound before it reaches the surface. That is why a slow meter with nothing visible inside the house often turns into a longer job than people expect, and why we talk it through honestly before anyone starts digging.

Can I get an allowance for a leak I knew about?

Usually not. The whole basis of a remission is that the loss was hidden and you acted once you found it. A leak you were aware of and left running is a different situation. This is a practical argument for getting a repair booked promptly rather than living with a known drip for a few months.

Should I read my own meter regularly?

It is a good habit, particularly in an older house. Reading it on the same day each month takes a minute and turns your water use into something you can see, so an underground leak shows up as a change in the trend rather than as a shock on a bill three months later. Take a photo of the dial each time and the record builds itself.

Does a high bill mean I need a whole new water main?

Not automatically. If the leak is at a fitting, a joint or a fixture, it is a repair. Replacing the run becomes the sensible option when the pipe is old, the leak cannot be pinpointed, or the same line has already failed more than once. We will give you the arithmetic on both before you commit to either.